The Genesis of Jesus

• Isaiah 7:10-16
• Romans 1:1-7
• Matthew 1:18-25
• Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

 

On the other side of this wall is a little room where the altar party puts on our vestments before worship, and where we keep our processional crosses and torches and other paraphernalia of the liturgy.  It’s also where we keep a book like this, called the Register of Church Services.  Each page in it is the same, a table of columns and rows in which we record the details of every service of worship that takes place under the auspices of St. John’s—when it happened, and where, and what kind of service it was, and how many people were there, and who were the leaders, and so on.  Now, there are more services going on around here than you might realize, but even so, it takes a number of years before a book like this gets completely filled in.  It was Wednesday in Holy Week, 2012 the last time we began a new one.

But I still have not put this, last book to rest in the file drawer in the church archives with the other old Registers of Church Services.  I’ve kept it out on a shelf in my office, right behind my desk.  During the first couple years of its retirement I used to look at it frequently, usually when I was planning for a special liturgical event, and needed to remind myself what we’d done last time, and how many people had attended.  Sometimes I took it down just to look at it for a little while, to see what stories it has to tell.  It had come along with this building when St. John’s Episcopal retook possession from the breakaway church in 2009, and its records go back a number of years before that, detailing the worshipping life of a parish very different from the one I know, and yet hauntingly the same. 

For the last year or so, I’ve not looked at this Register at all, but I’ve kept it on my bookshelf anyway.  I see now that I’d been keeping it out for today.   Because here is the record that notes that ten years ago yesterday, the 17^th of December, 2006, was the Third Sunday of Advent, and that there were 23 in attendance at the Rite I Eucharist at 8 a.m. that day, and 140 at the 10 o’clock Rite II.  And here in the last column on the page, the one headed “Memoranda,” there is written this little note:

12 noon—Parish Mtng.  Vote to disassociate from The Episcopal Church and Diocese of Northern CA and change name to St. John’s Anglican Church!

Ten years is a long time—maybe long enough that after today I can finally put this book away in the archives.  A lot has changed.  I don’t know how many of the 163 people who were in church here that Sunday are gathered again this morning at St. John’s Anglican on the other side of town.  I do know that very, very few of them are here today.  Ten years has been long enough for the crisis to feel resolved, and the wounds almost healed.  It’s been long enough for new things to grow out of the ashes of the fire. 

On the other hand, ten years is not so long a time that we can’t still feel a little of the anger, and the fear, and the sense of betrayal that were in the air that morning.  Which is why I’m bringing it up today—not just because ten is a nice round number, but because this anniversary falls in Advent, when we remember how much we hope for God to come and be with us, to save us from our sins.

This is the hope that Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus is all about.  The angel sums it up for us when it speaks to Joseph in his dream.  It tells him to name Mary’s child Yeshua, which in Aramaic means something like, “He will save,” because he will save his people from their sins.  Now, this line of scripture that might make some of us feel just a little bit squirmy.  The notion that Jesus came to “save us from our sins” has often been turned into shorthand for, if I might say so, a somewhat simplistic and aggressive form of Christian belief.  Which can make it hard for some of us to get any meaning out of it that actually sounds like good news.  But Matthew can help us with this, if we realize that for him these words are not some superficial slogan.  He is making them the centerpiece of the prologue to his gospel, so that we will read the whole rest of the story to find what “saving his people from their sins” really means.

By the time Matthew has finished his writing we will learn that it’s a story that is ongoing, and will be until the end of the age.  And it is also the continuation of the stories that came before, the ones about Israel’s God and Israel’s people that are recounted in the Hebrew Bible.  That’s why Matthew fills his gospel with quotations from scripture, so we see that the events he describes fulfill the ancient prophesies and promises.  It’s why he makes even the structure of his book to be a kind of reflection of the Torah, so that the genesis of Jesus is patterned on the beginning of that other, more ancient story. 

Like the Book of Genesis, the story of Jesus begins with a man and a woman, who are intended for one another.  And then there comes betrayal.  In Genesis the Serpent convinces the woman to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, and to give some to her husband. In Matthew, it is found that Mary, who has yet to be joined to Joseph, has conceived a child.

In Genesis, when God finds his creatures hiding in fear and shame in the bushes of the garden, Adam points his finger at Eve and says, “She did it!”  And Joseph is tempted to do the same.  He would have been within his rights under the law to publicly disgrace his fiancée for dishonoring him in this way, or even to demand that she be stoned to death.  But, says the gospel, Joseph is a righteous man, and in this manner Matthew is already telling us that “righteousness” is going to have a particular meaning in the story that follows.  It is not the self-righteousness that is superior and judgmental toward others, but something more akin to forgiveness, understanding, and compassion.  Still, Joseph decides that his trust in Mary is broken (who can blame him?), and that it’s best for them to quietly go their separate ways, but just then the angel comes with news from God.

In his dream Joseph learns that Mary has not betrayed him at all, and that he can still trust her to love him and be his wife, and more than that, that all his pain and doubt has been for God’s extraordinary purpose.  At the same time, Joseph is left knowing that something mysterious happened to Mary that will always remain between her and God, and that her first-born son will never be exactly his.  He will always have to live with the knowledge that the neighbors can subtract from nine, and that some of them might see his marriage as not quite up to the highest standard.  He will always have to live with the memory of his painful feelings of betrayal, of jealousy, and rage; the memory of his struggle to master those feelings, and his resolve to break off his engagement.  But being saved from our sins is not the same as having them erased from memory, as if they never happened.  It means that they are prevented from destroying us.         

I cannot help but see the fact that today there are people worshipping from the Book of Common Prayer at two St. John’s churches in Petaluma, as a sin.  Which is not to say that no good has come of it, or that we cannot find in what happened ten years ago yesterday and all that followed, stories of courage, and kindness, healing, and hope, both on “our side” and on “theirs.”  All things considered, it might be better this way, at least for now.  One thing that I am sure of is that God did not allow this sin to destroy us, but has birthed miraculous new life out of the brokenness of anger, rejection, and betrayal.  I hope this is true for “them” as well as for “us,” and it would not surprise me a bit if it were.  Because that is what happens when Christ comes.      

Long time abiding

• Exodus 33:18-23
• 1 John 1:1-9
• John 21:19b-24
• Psalm 92:1-4,11-14

It is hard to say what meaning, if any, we should take from the fact that when people gathered 160 years ago today in the parlors Washington Hotel in Petaluma to organize an Episcopal church they chose the name “St. John’s.”  Maybe some of them brought with them fond memories of another St. John’s Church in another town they’d left behind.  Maybe they just liked the name, because it had a robust, churchly ring to it.  But maybe there was more to it than that.  Maybe our founding fathers and mothers had a particular love for the books of the New Testament named for John.  Maybe they found in those writings a spirit and a truth that they hoped would inhabit the new community they were forming.

We can’t say for sure.  We do know that by the 20^th Century, people here came to think enough of St. John to commission the four windows, two on each side of the nave, that illustrate different traditions associated with his name.  I love those windows, each of which is an extraordinary little image in its own right, but I have a particularly close relationship with that one over there—“St. John writing his Epistle.”  Every Sunday and Wednesday, and sometimes on other days at weddings and funerals, I sit right here listening to the reading of the scriptures, preparing myself to preach, and I look at St. John, gazing at the cross in the window, just as I am gazing at him, trying to capture with pen and paper something of the mystery of Christ’s love.

Now, from a historical point of view those windows are a bit of an embarrassment.  Modern critical scholars have long questioned whether the John who lies over there on the Isle of Patmos dreaming of the New Jerusalem could possibly be the same person who wrote the fourth Gospel, or the three New Testament letters of John.  And while the Gospel claims to be the testimony of the “Disciple whom Jesus loved,” it leaves his or her identity notably obscure, and there is nothing in the text itself to definitively link it, as later tradition did, to John, the brother of James, one of the twelve apostles.    The most that academics are willing to concede today is that there might have been a “school” of Christian teaching, if you will, and a community committed to handing it down, that traced its origins back to that John.  

But even this is subject to debate.  Alternate candidates for the Beloved Disciple abound nowadays, including Lazarus of Bethany and Mary Magdalene.  And I have to admit, it’s not a question I’ve given much thought or study.  Because for me, knowing the “real source” of the tradition of the Gospel of John, is less important than the general point that today’s reading from that Gospel makes.  Which is that the church has never been a monolith.  There have always different communities with different ways of bearing witness to Christ, and these differences go all the way back to the differences between Jesus’ disciples.  Because they had different personalities and experiences, and qualitatively different relationships with their master.  

The community that produced the Gospel of John was well aware that they possessed stories and sayings of Jesus that were markedly different from those of other Christian groups.  But they preserved them, tenaciously, as a precious inheritance from the mind and heart of the disciple whom Jesus loved.  The Gospel today cites a tradition that Jesus himself had said that this disciple would remain until he came.  But it also points out very clearly that it would be a misinterpretation to take that saying literally, as if it meant that the community’s founder did not and will not die.  Because it is the community that ensures that the witness of the beloved disciple will not pass away.  That testimony, that revelation of eternal life, gives the community its unique vocation to the church and to the world, and they will remain steadfast in declaring it, until it is finally fulfilled. 

This word “remain” or sometimes “abide,” is a particular favorite of the author of the Gospel and the letters of John.  And it’s a word with particular resonance for a congregation celebrating its 160^th year.  Somehow St. John’s, Petaluma has managed to remain through a Civil War and two World Wars, through earthquakes, floods, and fires, and numerous economic depressions, through social struggles over abolition, and temperance, and women’s suffrage, and the rights of labor and civil rights, and even internal theological divisions that have resulted, at least twice, in schism.  And those historic events surely had an impact on the people of St. John’s.  But I have to tell you, as I’ve spent quite a lot of time in the past couple of months, poring over our parish archives, I have noted that these events scarcely earn a mention in the records of this church.  It’s as if there’s been some other history going on here all this time, some other life being lived, that pays little mind to the headlines in the newspaper—no matter what happens in the wider world, it simply abides.

Which brings me back to our gospel lesson this morning and its story of two disciples, walking with the risen Jesus after breakfast on the beach.  The first one, Peter, has a dramatic, emotional conversation with the Lord, in which he professes his love for him three times, and three times is told “feed my sheep.”  And Jesus calls Peter all over again to follow him, as a pastoral and missionary leader of the church, and in the end to take the way of the cross and die a martyr’s death in Rome.   But before he sets out, Peter turns and sees the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and he asks, “Lord, what about him?”  And Jesus tells Peter, not that it’s any of his business, that he has something else in mind for that one, something less exciting or seemingly important, which is that he should simply remain.

In a world that is all about making an impact, and achieving results, it’s not that easy to explain to outsiders what exactly we’ve been doing here at St. John’s, Petaluma for the last hundred and sixty years.  No doubt our members have made significant contributions to the general welfare and quality of life in the town over that time.  Many of them surely played at least a small part in the great events that have shaped the world.  But there’s not really anything we can point to, outside of our little church on the corner, and say with pride “that was us—we did that.”  There aren’t any great saints or famous people whose names we can drop in casual conversation and say “by the way, she was one of ours.”  But this doesn’t necessarily mean we have not been faithful to our calling as a parish.  Maybe we were never called on a heroic missionary quest; maybe we were never called to be in the vanguard of the revolution.  Maybe, like the beloved disciple, we were called simply to remain, to abide.

“To abide” doesn’t only mean to persist or endure—it can also mean “to dwell,” “to rest” or “to inhabit.”  And while it may be that Christ is a truth to grasp, or a cause to embrace, or a victory to win, in the Gospel and the Letters of John, Christ is also a love to abide in.  He is a vine in whom we abide, and if we do abide in him we bear much fruit, but if we don’t we can do nothing.  He is a word of life that abides in us when he eat his flesh and drink his blood.  And so for 160 years, the people of St. John’s, Petaluma have made this our main purpose, and the focus of our common life—in good times and bad, in season and out of season, abiding in Christ, and praying him to abide in us.  And if from time to time we have lost our way, and gotten caught up in things of secondary importance, we have so far always managed somehow to find our way back to the center, to the word of life, to the place we are called to remain. 

A Vision for St. John's

First published in The Beloved Disciple, the monthly newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church, Petaluma: http://www.saintjohnsepiscopalpetaluma.org/page/newsletter

People sometimes ask me what my vision is for St. John’s.  It’s been a hard question to answer because a vision takes time to develop, and time to communicate.  It is not a plan of action, but a description of where we hope our actions will take us.  It isn’t about what we will do so much as about who we will be.  As priest and pastor, it is part of my job do articulate a vision, but it can’t be just something I think up on my own—it has to be something I listen for, in what others are saying, in my own heart, and in the conversations between us.  During the four years I’ve been here we’ve had a lot of conversations about what matters most, and what we hope we are becoming.  I have tried to listen carefully to what’s been said.  And during this year’s season of discernment, I’ve made time for conversations with trusted friends about what I’ve learned and what inspires me to want to make a new commitment to the work of this congregation.  I’ve also done some listening to what is being said in the wider Episcopal Church about its challenges and opportunities for the future.

What follows is the fruit of these conversations.  It is a personal statement, and I don’t claim to speak for everyone at St. John’s.  But I offer it to you in the hope that some part or parts of it will speak to you, and illuminate your vision for the parish. 

St. John’s is a place where people are drawn by the love of God, called to seek the divine image in themselves and one another; uniting in praise and thanksgiving at Christ’s table, in contemplation and discernment, and in active works of wisdom, justice, beauty, and truth, we share here on earth in the joys of heaven.  It is a place from which each of us is sent to find the unique vocation that grows from our responsibilities and gifts, and to play our part in the mission of Christ to the world.  We are a circle from which no one who is not a danger to others is excluded, in which every voice is heard, and every truth respected, where no one is above criticism, and no one is beyond hope.

We foster a religious culture devoted to the maturation of our spiritual gifts and the satisfaction of our deepest needs by the grace of God—through taking creative risks, telling the truth, making repentance, seeking reconciliation, and empowering one another for servant-leadership in the world.  We take nourishment from the testimony of the Hebrew prophets and sages and the Apostolic communities; from the teaching and example of holy women and men of the past and present; from the riches of Christian tradition in music and the arts, mysticism, theology, and social action; from our membership in a worldwide communion of Anglican brothers and sisters, and the ecumenical body of Christ; from the rhythms of the hours and the church year, and the sacramental elements of grace.  

We are a place for joyous worship, with strong participation by people of all ages, representing the cultural diversity of our community, and bringing the talents of many leaders together in stirring, centering, prayerful, and purposeful celebrations of the Holy Spirit.  We are a learning community practicing the arts of peace—compassionate dialogue, open inquiry, and courageous discipleship.  We seek personal encounter across social, political, and religious barriers, in the shared pursuit of mutual understanding and the common good.  We offer space for a deeper and kindlier look at the world in which we live, where simplicity and faith allow us to hear the voice of the earth, of our bodies, and of the heart, and to take reverent and practical steps to restore the balance of the world.

We are wise and loving stewards of the goods we receive, cherishing the past and preparing for the future without illusions about either, but placing our trust in God’s covenant faithfulness, the truth of the Gospel, and the resilience of creation.